Book #111: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

Title: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
Author: David Sedaris

When I heard that a new collection of David Sedaris essays was scheduled for publication, I preordered it from Amazon immediately. It wasn't until the book arrived and I started reading it that I realized that it was not a series of stories from Sedaris's own life, but a collection of fables about animals. Think Aesop, only dirtier.

I've always had an irrational prejudice against stories where there are talking animals (I blame it on my ninth-grade English teacher, who made us read Watership Down one miserable summer), so I wasn't excited to discover that this was a book about talking animals. Ugh.

But I'd paid for the book, I might as well read it, right? It's a relatively short book beautifully illustrated by Ian Falconer (of Olivia and The New Yorker fame). And it's not terrible. Actually, it's pretty funny, with anthropomorphized animals doing all of the horrible and evil things usually only humans are capable of. But at $22 for 175 small pages with big type and even bigger margins, the book feels pretty pricey for what you actually get. Next time I hear that a book by Sedaris is coming out, I'll check and see if it's about animals-- if it is, I'll reserve it at the library, but I'd still pay full price for a book of his essays.